1. Recall that in describing the excitement surrounding Baraka’s forthcoming speech at the Sixth Pan-African Congress in Dar es Salaam, Hoyt Fuller mentioned that all concerned knew by then that Baraka had shifted his ideological allegiances to Marxism.
2. LeRoi Jones / Amiri Baraka, The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones / Amiri Baraka (New York: Freundlich Books, 1984), p. 305. This book is henceforth cited as The Autobiography.
3. Ibid., pp. 298, 305.
4. LeRoi Jones, Raise Race Rays Raze (New York: Random House, 1971), p. 130. In a 1970 interview, Baraka claimed that Marxism-Leninism was alien to black people: “Although we can learn from other people, the American blacks of 1970 are not going to be freed by nineteenth century Europeans. Our freedom won’t be found in the teachings of Marx or Lenin. Neither Communism nor Capitalism nor Christianity has the energy, or the strength, necessary to orient black-colored people in a direction which will be beneficial to them.” See Charles Reilly, ed., Conversations with Amiri Baraka (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1994), p. 83.
5. In the first issue of First World (the short-lived successor to Black World), Addison Gayle lamented Baraka’s “defection” to Marxism, concluding that it was an “aesthetic based upon economic and class determinism . . . which has minimal value to Black People.” See Gayle’s “Blueprint for Black Criticism,” First World 1, no. 1 (January/February 1977).
6. Kalamu Ya Salaam, “Tell No Lies, Claim No Easy Victories: African Liberation Day: An Assessment,” Black World 23, no. 4 (October 1974): 21.
7. The Autobiography, pp. 298, 312.
8. Gerald Early, “On LeRoi Jones / Amiri Baraka,” Salmagundi, nos. 70–71 (Spring/Summer 1986): 345, 346.
9. This point was also raised in Josef Jarab, “Black Aesthetic: A Cultural or Political Concept,” Callaloo #25, vol. 8, no. 3 (Fall 1985): 587–93.
10. When Madhubuti’s understated criticism of Baraka’s new leftism, “The Latest Purge,” appeared in (September 1974), several black intellectuals came to Baraka’s defense, and the editors of The Black Scholar published these rejoinder articles. Two were published in the October 1974 issue: Ronald Walters, pp. 47–49, and S. E. Anderson, pp. 50–51. The other two responses were published in the January/February issue: Kalumu Ya Salaam, pp. 40–43, and Mark Smith, pp. 44–52. The October 1974 issue of Black Scholar published an anti-Marxist response from Alonzo 4X (Cannady), the news editor of Muhammad Speaks. The opening sentence is “Now that the ideological bankruptcy of Imamu Amiri Baraka’s black nationalist detour has become manifest and the old integration euphemism of Marxism-Leninism has become an integral part of his poetic vision, he is, alas—irrelevant” (p. 52).
11. LeRoi Jones / Amiri Baraka, The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1997), pp. 435–36. This later edition is henceforth cited as The Autobiography II.
12. This speech was subsequently issued as a CAP position paper. See Imamu Amiri Baraka, “National Liberation and Politics,” March 1974, pp. 1–5.
13. Amiri Baraka, “Revolutionary Party: Revolutionary Ideology,” CAP position paper, March 31, 1974, pp. 1, 3.
14. The Autobiography II, p. 435.
15. Amiri Baraka, “Toward Ideological Clarity,” Congress of Afrikan Peoples ideological paper, May 24, 1974, p. 31.
16. Ibid., p. 24.
17. For a collection of Cabral’s writings that appeared after Baraka left black nationalism, see Amilcar Cabral, Unity and Struggle: Speeches and Writings of Amilcar Cabral, trans. Michael Wolfers (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1979).
18. See Ronald H. Chilcote, Amilcar Cabral’s Revolutionary Theory and Practice: A Critical Guide (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1991), esp. pp. 26–27, 37–40, 51–52; and Michael S. Morgado, “Amilcar Cabral’s Theory of Cultural Revolution,” Black Images 3 (Summer 1974): 3–16.
19. Baraka, “Toward Ideological Clarity,” p. 28.
20. Chilcote, Amilcar Cabral’s Revolutionary Theory and Practice, pp. 26–38. Also see Jock McCulloch, “Amilcar Cabral: A Theory of Imperialism,” Journal of Modern African Studies 19 (September 1981): 503–10, and In The Twilight of Revolution (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983), a study of Cabral.
21. See Amilcar Cabral, “Connecting the Struggles: An Informal Talk with Black Americans,” in Amilcar Cabral, Return to the Source: Selected Speeches of Amilcar Cabral, ed. Africa Information Service (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1973), p. 78.
22. Baraka, “Toward Ideological Clarity,” p. 31.
23. Amiri Baraka, “The Congress of Afrikan People: A Position Paper,” Black Scholar, January/February 1975, p. 9.
24. Baraka, “Black Nationalism and Socialist Revolution: Why I Changed My Ideology,” Black World, July 1975, p. 30.
25. Ibid., pp. 31–32.
26. Baraka was somewhat prophetic in this regard. Approximately a year after this essay was published, Andrew Young, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, played such a role in Africa during the Carter administration. Young traveled throughout the continent, meeting with African elites and selling capitalist development and alliances with the United States as the true hope for Africa.
27. Baraka, “Black Nationalism,” p. 33.
28. Ibid., p. 38.
29. Amiri Baraka, Daggers and Javelins: Essays (New York: Morrow, 1984), p. 10. Needless to say, the M-L-M refers to Marxist-Leninist-Mao Zedong thought.
30. Leo Ou-fan Lee, Voices from the Iron House: A Study of Lu Xun (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), p. 124. Lu Xun was the pen name for Zhou Shuren. For a contextual discussion of his writings, see Bonnie S. McDougall and Kam Louie, The Literature of China in the Twentieth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), pp. 22–27, 46–48, 93–99.
31. For the historical context of Lu Xun (Lu Hsun) see Jonathan D. Spence, The Gate of Heavenly Peace: The Chinese and Their Revolution, 1895–1980 (New York: Viking Press, 1981); Chow Tse-tsung, The May Fourth Movement: Intellectual Revolution in Modern China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1967); and Tsi-An Hsia, The Gate of Darkness: Studies on the Leftist Literary Movement in China (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1968). For collections of Lu Xun’s work, see Gladys Yang, ed. and trans., Silent China: Selected Writings of Lu Xun (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), Lu Hsun: Writing for the Revolution: Essays by Lu Hsun and Essays on Lu Hsun (San Francisco: Red Sun Publishers, 1976), and Selected Stories of Lu Hsun (Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1972).
32. See Ou-fan Lee, Voices from the Iron House, p. 111.
33. Ibid., p. 125.
34. Ibid., p. 133.
35. Reilly, ed., Conversations with Amiri Baraka, p. 244. Since his adoption of Marxism, Baraka has made numerous claims concerning the censorship of his work, repeatedly stating that he has been unable to get some of his works published, even though his works have sold quite well. While I have no proof to substantiate this claim, it seems reasonable to accept Baraka’s formulations at face value. As a prominent, prolific, frequently anthologized American writer, Baraka certainly would know when he is having difficulty finding a publisher.
36. Baraka, Daggers and Javelins, p. 23.
37. Ibid., pp. 91, 95, 96.
38. Harry Haywood, Black Bolshevik: Autobiography of an Afro-American Communist (Chicago: Liberator Press, 1978).
39. See Robin D. G. Kelley, Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990). Contrary to Baraka’s false historical depictions, Kelley shows that the black nation thesis made little impact on the communists’ popularity among blacks.
40. Baraka, Daggers and Javelins, pp. 58–59
41. For an excellent discussion of socialist realism, see Luc Herman, Concepts of Realism (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1996), esp. chaps. 5 and 8.
42. A sampling of various ideas about Marx and art can be found in Maynard Solomon, ed., Marxism and Art: Essays Classic and Contemporary (New York: Knopf, 1973).
43. Terry Eagleton, Marxism and Literary Criticism (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976), p. 37.
44. Jürgen Rühl, Literature and Revolution: A Critical Study of the Writer and Communism in the Twentieth Century, trans. and ed. Jean Steinberg (New York: Praeger, 1969), p. 136.
45. From the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers, 1934, p. 716; reprinted in Abram Tertz, The Trial Begins and On Socialist Realism (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California, Press, 1982), p. 148.
46. Eagleton, Marxism and Literary Criticism, p. 38.
47. See Anne Fremantle, ed., Mao Tse-Tung: An Anthology of His Writings (New York: New American Library, 1962), “Talks at the Yenan Forum on Art and Literature,” May 23, 1942, pp. 242–63.
48. Reilly, ed., Conversations with Amiri Baraka, p. 137.
49. I use the word supposedly, since Baraka does respect the thought of Enver Hoxha, even though Hoxha had not been the leader of a major revolutionary movement. Baraka’s celebration of Hoxha probably derives from the fact that Hoxha was favorably mentioned in the literature of the People’s Republic of China. Albania, the only Communist east European nation that remained completely outside the Soviet orbit, developed strong ties to “Red China.”
50. Perhaps the reductionist Baraka should be asked a reductionist question. What is it about the former LeRoi Jones that led him to believe that this was the best literary criticism he had ever read? Admittedly, this question is unfair and somewhat patronizing, but it seems appropriate given the enormity of Baraka’s claim concerning Mao’s views of literature. After all, why is it that Mao, a great political figure and revolutionary leader, also emerges as the best literary critic ever read by a well-read American writer?
51. Ibid., p. 140. One can only wonder whether Baraka viewed the Schomberg Collection of slave narratives as a counterhegemonic event.
52. I can only assume that Baraka did not include Johnson’s God’s Trombones in this same category.
53. Baraka, Daggers and Javelins, pp. 142–43.
54. Ibid., p. 145.
55. Ibid., pp. 146–47.
56. Baraka, Daggers and Javelins, pp. 310, 313.
57. Ibid., p. 314. Perhaps a better example of Wright’s attraction to black nationalism can be found in Twelve Million Black Voices.
58. Ralph Ellison, “Richard Wright’s Blues,” in his Shadow and Act (New York: Vintage Books, 1972), pp. 77–94. The essay was originally published in the Antioch Review (Summer 1945).
59. Michelle Wallace, Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman (New York: Dial, 1978); Ntozake Shange, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf (New York: Macmillan, 1977).
60. The insightful study of Baraka by William Harris, The Poetry and Poetics of Amiri Baraka: The Jazz Aesthetic (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1985), becomes flawed at precisely the moment that Harris treats Baraka’s “Marxism” as if it were a serious intellectual engagement. Literary critics like Harris can be excused for being unfamiliar with Marxist political and economic thought. However, in 1985, there remained little justification for an American literary critic not to be familiar with Walter Benjamin, Raymond Williams, Fred Jameson, Terry Eagleton, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Georg Lukacs, as well as other significant Marxist literary intellectuals. Baraka’s Marxism and, in particular, his conception of a Marxist aesthetic are not part of this intellectual ball game!
1. Amiri Baraka, The Motion of History and Other Plays (New York: Morrow, 1978), p. 7.
2. My mention of the manipulation of rhetoric placing God on the side of the black oppressed should not be confused with liberation theology, which also asserts that God is on the side of the oppressed but does not assume that emancipation is inevitable.
3. Baraka, The Motion of History, pp. 33, 34–35.
4. Ibid., p. 40.
5. In a footnote to this instruction, Baraka noted that after “the first few performances, the company suggested that discussion be after the production so the actors could participate, and this was done with good results, without plants” (ibid., p. 75).
6. Ibid.
7. In portraying Elijah Muhammad as displaying all of the profundity of a scratched record that replays the same lyrics endlessly, Baraka issued one of his few public condemnations of the leader of the Nation of Islam.
8. The play can be found in Baraka’s The Motion of History and Other Plays, pp. 152–206. Baraka included a glossary of Marxist-Leninist terminology in the original program notes which was subsequently reprinted in this volume. In addition, Baraka included a short description of the provisions of the S-1 crime bill as it was debated in the U.S. Senate.
9. Here Baraka chides Elijah Muhammad and even an earlier version of himself for advocating essentialist views about the inherent “evil” nature of white people.
10. Baraka, The Motion of History, p. 173.
11. The play was published in Amiri Baraka, Selected Plays and Prose of Amiri Baraka / LeRoi Jones (New York: Morrow, 1979), pp. 252–76.
12. Ibid., p. 253.
13. E. San Juan Jr., a Marxist literary critic, was so impressed by this play that he called it “the most significant theatrical achievement of 1978 in the western hemisphere.” Moreover, San Juan evidently believed that the only critics who would find serious fault with this play were bourgeois academics. While his views may reflect those of other economistic Marxists, I can only conclude that San Juan was as crude as Baraka in his understanding of Marxist aesthetics. See E. San Juan Jr., “Amiri Baraka, Revolutionary Playwright: Baraka Unmasks the Lone Ranger in the Long March toward a People’s Theater,” in Amiri Baraka: The Kaleidoscopic Torch: A Literary Tribute. A special issue of Steppingstones: A Literary Anthology toward Liberation, ed. James B. Gwynne (New York: Steppingstones Press, 1985), p. 151.
14. C. W. E. Bigsby, A Critical Introduction to Twentieth-Century American Drama, vol. 3: Beyond Broadway (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 403.
15. Amiri Baraka, Hard Facts (Newark: Congress of Afrikan People, 1975), 1st page of introduction (unnumbered).
16. Ibid., 3d page of introduction.
17. Ibid., 3d and 4th pages of introduction.
18. Ibid., p. 3.
19. Baraka’s understanding of Jesus stems from a rather orthodox materialist Marxist critique of religion. As such, it also suffers from the same limitations of any understanding of Christianity that ignores the centrality of the fear of death as a source of religious beliefs. See Merold Westphal, God, Guilt, and Death: An Existential Phenomenology of Religion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984).
20. Baraka, Hard Facts, p. 6.
21. Ibid., p. 7.
22. Ibid., p. 11. The term ho is slang for “whore.”
23. Excerpts from Poetry for the Advanced can be found in Amiri Baraka, Selected Poetry of Amiri Baraka / LeRoi Jones (New York: Morrow, 1979), pp. 275–340.
24. Werner Sollors, Amiri Baraka / LeRoi Jones: The Quest for a “Populist Modernism” (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978), pp. 236–37.
25. Baraka takes “scientific” Marxism to mean that it is true and beyond “subjective” intellectual debate. As such, he misunderstands that “scientific Marxism” also has a contested intellectual tradition. Incidentally, in calling Mao a scientific Marxist, Baraka differs with Alvin Gouldner, who found more elements of “critical Marxism” than “scientific Marxism” in Maoism. See Alvin Gouldner, The Two Marxisms: Contradictions and Anomalies in the Development of Theory (New York: Seabury Press, 1980), chap. 2, esp. pp. 51–53.
26. Baraka admits that “Kawaida was and is, if it still exists, a religion.” See LeRoi Jones / Amiri Baraka, The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones / Amiri Baraka (New York: Freundlich Books, 1984), p. 298. This book is henceforth cited as The Autobiography.
27. The interview with the literary critic Kimberly Benston was published in Boundary 2: A Journal of Postmodern Literature 6, no. 2 (Winter 1978): 309.
28. The Autobiography, p. 312.
29. Lloyd W. Brown, Amiri Baraka (Boston: Twayne, 1980), p. 168.
30. Interview with Baraka by Tish Dace, “LeRoi Jones / Amiri Baraka: From Muse to Malcolm to Mao,” Village Voice, August 1, 1977, p. 13.
1. Paul Vangelisti, ed., Transbluesency: The Selected Poems of Amiri Baraka / LeRoi Jones (1961–1995) (New York: Marsilio Publishers, 1995).
2. Born Sondra Lee Jones, Kimako Baraka was forty-seven years old when she was murdered in early February 1984 in her own apartment in Manhattan. A suspect was immediately arrested. See Leonard Buder, “Baraka’s Sister Slain in Manhattan Plaza; Suspect Arrested,” New York Times, February 2, 1984, p. B3.
3. W. E. B. Du Bois: A Biography in Four Voices (San Francisco: California Newsreel 1995); St. Clair Bourne, In motion: Amiri Baraka (Chicago: Facets Video, 1988).
4. Phillip Rieff, Fellow Teachers (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), p. 103.
5. Robert Hanley, “Black Poet Says Faculty ‘Nazis’ Blocked Tenure,” New York Times, March 15, 1990, p. B3.
6. In October 1990, Baraka wrote, “But still it was easier to be heard from with hate whitey than hate imperialism.” See William J. Harris, ed., The LeRoi Jones / Amiri Baraka Reader (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1991), p. xiii.
7. See Michael Paul Rogin, Ronald Reagan the Movie and Other Episodes in Political Demonology (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987).
8. How else would one describe James Foreman’s interruption of the services at Riverside Church in New York in May 1969 to issue the “Black Manifesto” seeking reparations from white Americans for what they had done to black Americans? My point here is not that white Americans do not have a debt to pay to black Americans. However, asking one’s “oppressor” to give one money in the hope of redressing past oppression is not confronting the power of the oppressor. Despite his rhetoric of black self-determination, Malcolm X was also locked in a complex victim-status relationship with white America. After all, the Nation of Islam included in its list of demands that white America not only cede the southern “black belt” states to black Americans but also subsidize this new nation financially until it could exist as a self-determined unit. The “white devil,” in other words, was supposed to fund black emancipation. It is somewhat astounding to recall that this idea was at the very center of the vision of one of black America’s most respected black nationalist organizations.
9. For a discussion of the war against black militants, see Cathy Perkins, ed., COINTELPRO: The FBI’s Secret War on Political Freedom (New York: Monad Press, 1975). Also see Robert Justin Goldstein’s Political Repression in Modern America: 1870 to the Present (Cambridge, MA: Schenkman, 1978).
10. Baraka, “‘Black Nationalism’: 1972,” Black Scholar, September, 1972, p. 26. Baraka certainly could have been talking about himself. No one threatened whites with death more often than he did. But to what avail? I am not sad that Baraka’s threats proved untrue, but I do wonder about the impact on one’s character of having made so many unfulfilled threats. After all the vicious nonsense that Baraka shouted at white Americans, what does it do to him now to have to “eat crow”? Baraka is a testimony to individual and perhaps collective Afro-American weakness. For all his bold posturing, bad, loud-mouthed LeRoi Jones operated under the protection of the First Amendment. Perhaps this is why the idea of conversion is so important to my analysis, for it allows me to explain how Baraka rid himself of those past sins associated with the previous ideology. By adopting a new ideology, he became a new man, and in the process he saved face.
11. For a brilliant analysis of Nixon’s assault on the black victim status, see Gary Wills, Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man (New York: New American Library, 1970).
12. See Lyndon Johnson, The Vantage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency, 1963–1969 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971).
13. See Alvin W. Gouldner, The Dialectic of Ideology and Technology (New York: Seabury Press, 1976).
14. Frank Lentricchia, Criticism and Social Change (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), p. 11.
15. The most vociferous critic of Baraka in recent times has been the essay writer Stanley Crouch. See Stanley Crouch, “Comrade, Comrade, Where You Been,” review of What Was the Relationship of the Lone Ranger to the Means of Production, by Amiri Baraka, Village Voice, June 11, 1979, p. 89; Also see Crouch, “The Lone Ranger’s Revenge,” Village Voice, June 18, 1979, and “The King of Constant Repudiation,” Village Voice, September 9, 1979.
16. Lentricchia, Criticism and Social Change, pp. 9–10.
17. Ibid., p. 10.
18. Ibid.
19. Harold Cruse, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual (New York: Morrow, 1967), p. 543.
20. Michael Walzer, The Company of Critics: Social Criticism and Political Commitment in the Twentieth Century (New York: Basic Books, 1988).
21. See Hannah Arendt, The Jew as Pariah: Jewish Identity and Politics in the Modern Age, ed. Ron H. Feldman (New York: Grove Press, 1978); Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2d ed. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973), esp. “Between Pariah and Parvenu,” pp. 56–68; and Michael Löwy, Redemption and Utopia: Jewish Libertarian Thought in Central Europe, A Study in Elective Affinity, trans. Hope Heaney (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992), esp. chap. 3, “Pariahs, Rebels and Romantics: A Sociological Analysis of the Central European Jewish Intelligentsia.” Also see Walzer, The Company of Critics, esp. “Albert Camus’s Algerian War,” pp. 136–52. I find Edward Said’s analysis of Camus’s position far more persuasive and ethically sound than Walzer’s. See Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Knopf, 1993), esp. “Camus and the French Imperial Experience,” pp. 169–85.